by Logan Hunder
As closed door after closed door passed them by, Kim’s heart began to sink. Granted, she hadn’t tried any of them yet, but between the rave-like lighting and the way the first two notes of “Sound of Da Police” still hadn’t stopped playing over the speakers, she couldn’t help but suspect the building had gone into some kind of lockdown mode. She slowed her pace to a trot and moved over to the nearest door while Whisper took the opportunity to place her hands on her knees and wheeze away some dignity. As she suspected, the door rejected the code this time. It was likely for the best, since this prison was about the worst place in the universe to revive The Dating Game, but it came with the unfortunate caveat of confirming her theory. She slapped the door in exasperation.
“We’re stuck, aren’t we?” Whisper sighed.
“No,” Kim responded. She straightened up and faced her cohort, wearing her annoyance in the form of pursed lips. “We’re trapped. There’s a slight difference.”
“Are . . . are you just not gonna check down the rest of the hallway?”
“And what do you think I’m going to find down there?” She gestured down into the flashing red abyss. “You think they just locked all the, the things, but left the exit open for us?”
“Cool! The only person on the ship that ever knows what they’re doing now also has no clue what they’re doing!”
“Oh, I’m sorry! Since you’re yelling at me for not having a plan I assume you have one, then?”
“Yeah, it’s called ‘Let you handle it ‘cause I thought you had a plan.’”
“Spoken like a true damsel.”
Whisper rolled her eyes and made a noise somewhere between an “Ugh” and a retch.
“Well, come on! Who just goes around rescuing people all casually and stuff?”
“I hate to break this to you, Whisper, but there’s not always going to be time to come up with some elaborate heist with Rube Goldberg machines and shit. And there won’t always be someone to do it for you, either.”
A tall woman she was not, but she eked out an inch or two on Whisper and elevated herself figuratively further with some no-nonsense eye contact before continuing.
“Now, I’m not going to put you in a sink-or-swim situation like that right now, because this is a little bit too serious of a situation to try and wring some contrived parenting crap out of it. But mark my words; there will be a time when it’s gonna be all you. So when that time comes, you gotta be able to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and get it done.”
At that, the pilot instantly scrunched up her face into one of those disgusted teenager expressions. However, after a moment’s consideration she changed her mind and instead opted for a more serene, plastic look, complete with a preppy voice tinged with cheerful condescension.
“Did you really just say pull myself up by my bootstraps? That phrase used to be an insult to make fun of dumb people who think they can do impossible things. Y’know why? ‘Cause it’s physically impossible!”
“Well, fun as that fact is, it’s been an idiom for pretty much ever. It means to—”
“‘Kay, I know the history of the stupid phrase; I obviously know what it means. That’s the cool part of being smart: I’m able to know things without having to be a moron first and then learning my lesson. Over and over. Like somebody else we know.”
“No one’s smart enough to never ever get into trouble, Whisper . . . and even if you are, sometimes trouble happens.” She looked around, then added: “As you can see from where we’re standing right now.”
“And that’s my fault how?! Maybe if you didn’t marry an idiot who messes things up all the time you wouldn’t need to be so good at rescuing yourself. Seriously! I don’t get it! He’s so stupid! He’s not even good looking! What else is there besides his money?! Are you just an idiot too?”
“Whether or not it’s your fault doesn’t matt—”
There was a beat. Kim blinked a couple times, digesting the words.
“Wait a minute. Screw you, ya little bitch! It’s one thing to get high and mighty with me while I’m dragging your lazy ass out of goddamned prison, but now is the wrong time to start taking swings at my husband! I mean, there’s never a good time for that . . . and frankly I’m getting pretty sick of it.”
She shook her head and stomped off down the hallway. After about eight steps or so, her huffy retreat came to a premature halt, and instead she circled around and came in for another pass.
“Where do you get off being so stuck-up, anyway? Criticizing my man, like you could get anyone better. What, you think you’re gonna bag the Dos Equis guy with your zero life experience and, and, your . . . irritating monotone voice? You’re like the celery of people. Maybe if you stopped acting like you’re better than everybody you’d have some friends.”
“Maybe if you’d found someone before you were old and gross then you wouldn’t be stuck with a loser and stuck in prison!”
“We have been together for fifteen years! The only loser I’m stuck in this prison with is y—My god, I’m actually taking time out of my escape to squabble with a teenager in the middle of a hallway. What the hell is happening to me?”
Without another word, she trotted off once again. It was a less-stormy departure, but more permanent in nature. She wasn’t sure what she expected to find, but anything would be better than standing around there any longer. One thing was for sure, though: the situation was not going to solve itself.
And just then, the alarm stopped. Space Guantanamo’s red-light district retreated back into the ceiling and walls, and a seemingly random door opened up on Kim’s left. She peered at it in quiet contemplation. Half of her held a justifiable suspicion regarding the nature of its appearance. The other half wanted to just accept and take it. All in all, it was like waking up in the morning and finding a strange puppy in your bed. Despite their spat, Whisper came over and assisted her silent staring with some silent staring of her own.
“We’re gonna end up going through the door,” Kim said. “We both know it’s fishy as hell, and we’re both gonna sit here and gape at it trying to convince ourselves it’s not, and we never will . . . but I just know we’re both gonna end up going on through anyway.”
“Whatever.” Whisper rolled her eyes. “Things have finally calmed down, but hey, being impulsive got us this far, right?”
“You’re welcome to sit here and ponder to your heart’s content, then. I just don’t care anymore. But know that turning off the sirens doesn’t mean lockdown is over. Maybe they just got sick of the noise and figured if we were going to have a seizure, it would have happened by now.”
“Then why would they open the door?”
“Probably trying to kettle us somewhere we can be contained. Maybe even right back to our cells.”
“Then why all the running people with the guns and the yelling?”
“Look, I don’t work here, alright?! I’m offering speculation, not reading the goddamn procedure tablet. Either their plan will work, or I’ll find a loophole and get us out.”
“Or we’ll die.”
“ . . . Or we’ll die.”
Kim nodded, then crossed the threshold. Nothing happened. With a smug shrug, she turned around and raised an eyebrow. She didn’t exactly know what she was gloating about, but it sure felt like a gloatable moment, so she just went with it. It seemed to have worked, too, because it was enough to prompt Whisper to reach a dainty food inside and test the waters. Her approach could have done with a slight bit more urgency, but after a painfully long trial period, she finally committed and allowed herself all the way inside.
The door immediately slammed shut behind her.
“I knew that would happen!” She whined.
“Yeah, yeah, you know everything.” Kim uttered amid a heavy exhalation.
“Now we’re stuck!”
“Yes. We’re stuck. Stuck in this huge gymnasium of a room with more doors to try than the Mormon training camp.”
Little did Kim know, the room a
ctually didn’t have more doors than the Mormon training camp. The Mormon training camp in Sal Tlay Ka Siti, Uganda was a freaking huge compound that was far too large to contain within one room of a space station. But she was right that the room did indeed contain a concentration of doors that was much larger than average. What’s more, the walls were built in a sloping fashion to allow the installation of even more doors. In the days of locks and keys, this place would have been a janitor’s worst nightmare.
“Fine, we’ll try the doors then!” The teen declared in her first display of initiative. “I’ll take the right side, you take the left.”
“Well, we could try that, but I figured we’d start with that big double set at the far end there underneath that flashing ‘Exit’ sign.”
The aforementioned pair of doors could just be seen in the distance. They were embedded in the wall far on the other side of the empty expanse, the dingy exit sign above them blinking a silent siren song like the last vacancy sign in Bethlehem. Of all the hatches that pockmarked the walls, these were the only ones that had any kind of illuminated designation. All the rest were as dull as the room they were in: blank metal slabs with no unique features besides thin mail slot-type openings in the middles.
“And what if they’re locked?”
“Then we’ll try the other doors or we’ll try the vent or we’ll try to come up with other ideas. I dunno about you, but I don’t feel like freaking out until I know I have reason to.”
That wasn’t exactly a lie, but it certainly wasn’t as true as she’d have Whisper believe. Concealed beneath her flippant words and confident swagger was a mind rapidly trying every combination of expletive known to woman. She wasn’t sure which would be more worrisome: the door not opening for them, or the door opening for them. The prison was just in lockdown over her; and as far as she was aware, she hadn’t been caught yet. So when she did the math, she concluded that nothing could be more suspicious than this door opening when they tried it. However, Kim was never great at math.
As it turned out, the most suspicious circumstance was actually the door opening for them without them trying it . . . along with every other door in the sprawling Scooby Doo-hallway of a room.
Either some unseen force was trying to make their escape as cinematic as possible, or they had stepped on the right spot to trigger a boss fight. It was like standing in between two racehorse starting lines that faced each other. No bell sounded, but the gates lining the walls opened, and the inhabitants emerged from their dark stalls, blinking and shielding their eyes from the bright ceiling lights. Like most interplanetary people, they also wore space onesies; theirs all matching in a telling shade of pumpkin orange. When their eyes finally adjusted, they soon jumped to the two ladies within their midst. Within seconds, the inmates had closed ranks and the grins and nudges and murmurings began.
“Well, well, well,” a throaty voice from somewhere in the crowd growled. “Women.”
“I ain’t seen womens in forever.”
Kim sidled herself in front of Whisper as she glowered around at the amassing mob. Aside from that, there wasn’t much she could do. They were surrounded.
Yet surrounded was all they were. The gaggle of inmates, after forming their circle, just held fast. The nudges continued, but the grins began to wane and the comments . . . lost some lustre.
“Now’s your chance. Have at ’em.”
“Me?! I don’t wanna.”
“Just go talk to them.”
“You go talk to them!”
“I wouldn’t know what to say!”
“Well, me either!”
“Just ask their names or something, you idiots.”
“Oh, look at mister ladies’ man over here.”
“I bet he thinks he knows everything dames like.”
“Well, unlike some of us here, I do know they like it when you ask for consent.”
The response, while probably weak, was drowned out by a schoolyard chorus of “Oooooh”s. In a matter of seconds, the girls had gone from feeling like a pair of cats surrounded by dogs to a pair of mice surrounded by elephants. It churned up memories of school dances; those brief moments where the chaperone would duck out to the bathroom or drink themselves to sleep and the students could tear down the school board-mandated transparent gender-separation barrier. It always ended up a little something like this.
Kim began to pace forward. The reactions were subtle, yet readily visible from a bird’s-eye view. It was as though she was a shark swimming through a school of fish; no communication taking place, but everyone honouring the intangible, three-foot wide, estrogen-powered barrier she produced. Following this trend, the orange sea parted itself around her in a manner that was three parts convenient and one part pitiable. Whisper followed close behind, dark eyes aflutter with wonder as burly and weaselly internee alike would cast their gazes toward the floor or ceiling upon meeting hers.
They were nearing the perimeter when they found their path blocked by a lone man. A barrel-chested fellow, he was; tall, dark, and handsome, with wavy hair and embedded crows feet from his permanent smoldering expression. Unlike his imprisoned brethren, he felt no compulsion to move when approached. Instead he unfolded he arms and eyed Kim with a mixture of reverence and disbelief.
“Maddie? That you?”
Kim also stopped when she got a good look at him, causing Whisper to run into her back.
“Ahhh, Christ . . .” She sighed. Her eyes slowly traced the span of his body, finally coming to a stop at his face.
“Of all the cellblocks in all the space prisons in all the galaxy, I walk into yours.”
13.
JAILHOUSE FLOCK
WHY DID YOU OPEN all the cells?!”
“You told me to open the exit!”
“ . . . So you opened all the cells?!”
“I just hit the ‘open all doors’ button! Why are we yelling!?”
“Because you opened all the cells! How are you not getting this?!”
“What do you want me to do??”
“Well, let’s start with hitting the ‘close all doors’ button!”
“There is no ‘close all doors’ button.”
“What!? Why would there be an ‘open all doors’ button but not a ‘close all doors’ button?”
“Dude, I don’t know! Maybe they thought closing all the doors after they’d already been opened would be redundant.”
“Aww . . . quick! Start flicking all the individual cell openness switches.”
“I’m trying! This would be so much easier if they weren’t randomly placed all over this switchboard.”
“Oh, it’s no use . . . They’re definitely all out of their cells by now.”
“I could try pressing the ‘neutralize all inhabitants’ button?”
“What kind of neutralizing does it mean?”
“I dunno . . . I’m just reading the button . . .”
“Well that doesn’t help! I’m not going to risk killing everyone.”
“You might have to, dude! Look at the viewscreen. They got the girls surrounded.”
“They do, Mister Padilla, they do. But wait a minute . . . zoom in on their faces.”
“I don’t see the zoom button.”
“It’s that joystick down on the bottom left, there . . . next to the ‘close all doors’ button . . .”
“Oh, I see it. Boy, if only we had voice command privileges for this thing, huh?”
Cox pursed his lips and then his eyes. With a quick shake of his head, both returned to normal. His frustration was short lived once he got a better look at the action down in the prison wing. Those facial expressions were among the most identifiable in the animal kingdom. And while they didn’t represent relief for those wearing them, they did for the otherwise-helpless husband.
“Uh, Captain, what are they doing?”
“That, buddy, is the most natural response a man can have when encountering a beautiful woman,” Cox explained nonchalantly. “Paralyzing fear.”
“That big guy in front of them is so paralyzed he’s not even moving out of their way.”
The captain stuck his face as close as he could to the hologram of the gentleman, stopping only when he was on the verge of motorboating him. From the greying, tousled locks, to the chiselled arms, to the animated rotating biohazard neck tattoo, the unshaven man oozed bad boy so much he belonged in prison, regardless of criminal record.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “I know that guy! That’s Joakim Cochrane.”
“Who’s that?”
“Kim’s ex.”
“That’s her ex? Damn, you must be feeling really insecure right now.”
“Shh, lemme hear what they’re saying.”
They both leaned into the display, neither considering simply turning the volume up. Joakim loomed over Kim like Goliath over a sassy, genderbent David. His face seemed soured yet he spoke in the manner of a man not embittered by heartbreak, but with traces of affection still seasoning his smooth and confident voice.
“So what do you think you’re doing here, huh?” He teased through a smart-alecky half smile. “I thought you got out of the business.”
“Hey, I did get out,” the indignant Kim defended herself. “And even if I didn’t, you know I never get caught.”
“Oh, I remember. Well, if you didn’t get caught, then does that mean you’re here for a conjugal visit?”
“You wish.”
“I do wish. Am I supposed to be ashamed of wishing? I’m in prison, woman.”
Willy pointed at the image, drawing Cox’s attention to the thing that already had his attention.
“Dude! He just called your woman ‘woman!’”
“Hey! He did call her ‘woman’ . . . she is a woman, though?”
“Isn’t that, like, derogatory?”
“She doesn’t seem to mind.”